Anne Thompson has the Gotham Award nominations (Margot at the Wedding, Into the Wild, I'm Not There, The Savages and Juno among them)
Guardian Unlimited Funny post about onscreen nudity (brought on by Viggo Jr)
Danny Miller 'Falling in Love with Deborah Kerr'
Broken Projector the blogosphere is celebrating double features
Newsweek -This story making the rounds about Rowling "outing" the beloved wizard "In response, my roommate said, "No shit. The whole fucking thing is gay."As careless as the language may be [gay = stupid/uncool for ∞] it is justified: they're just treating the news as flippantly and dismissively as its delivered.
Whoa. somebody woke up on the wrong side of bed this morning! My apologies. bad blogger bad! Let's try that again: Dumbledore is gay? Cool... the best witches and wizards are.
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23 comments:
To be fair, JK didn't need another reason for Focus on the Family to hate her books.
But still, this is kind of lame. She really can just make stuff up now and say, "oh..there WAS a gay character, actually'.
I dunno, I thought it was pretty obvious that he was gay in the books. No, she never came out and said it, which would've been nice, but - esp. in the final book - I got the message.
What pissed me off more what the whole throwing Lupin into the closet. But I'm getting too geeky for my own good here.
It's kinda weird that she just revealed it after the end of the series, but I prefer to see this in a more positive light. It shows that Dumbledore's sexual orientation is a non-issue, not something that had to be said explicitly and draw attention to itself. I think it would have been more absurd to suddenly read in book 7 that Dumbledore is gay, when the wizarding world is going haywire with Voldemort's return.
And like the report says, JK stepped in when the filmmakers were about to insert something in Dumbledore's background about a girl in his past, so it's not like she just blurted out a new idea during the interview (?) to make news.
Yeah, I see it as a positive. It's not like a TV show where once it's over people won't think about it again. It's "Harry Potter" those books are gonna live forever.
It'll be interesting to see if they make mention of it in the movies though.
Well she already made them nix a female love interest for Dumbledore (in the 6th movie). So that's something.
I see this as a positive, too. I wouldn't have wanted to know about an old man's sexual proclivities in an explicit way in the books. I mean, who would go around saying it? It's just not as relevant when you're as old as him. Unless you have a partner.
Anyway, doesn't this make you wish Ian McKellen had ended up playing Dumbledore? Now THAT would've been cool. I can't stop thinking that now...
OK, now I'm already thinking that someone'll take exception to my comment about old people's sexualities not being as relevant. But you know what I mean, right? Come on.
Although if you're Ian McKellen and you bring 20-year-olds to award shows on your arm, then yes it is relevant. So he disproved the rule ; )
Dumbledore is no Gandolf, you obviously didn't read the last book.
Gandalf=Merlin anyway.
Gay DD, ah who cares, but like they said it's not a new idea.
Toni Collette as an "aggressive male biker"? I'm so there.
Re: Dumbledore. Furthermore, it's not really a gutsy or subversive move on her part, is it?. He ends up being yet another tragic figure who ends up alone.
She only revealed it because a kid asked her at a Q&A if Gandalf ever had a woman in his life. She said 'er...I always saw him as gay.' It wasn't meant to be a major revelation, for what's it's worth.
Just somehow revealing it in the seventh book would have been odd. Particularly considering that, aside from Snape (which was a major plot point), none of the single adult characters' personal lives in the books are discussed in great (or any) length: McGonagall, Mad-Eye, just barely Hagrid, Sirius, basically any of the secondary professors. It isn't the same thing at all as a sitcom actor coming out later.
agreed that we don't get much personal life from the adult characters (with the major exception of the Beasleys) and, again, i realize it's a bad mood reaction. just bein' honest about my reaction.
but glenn --it is the opposite of that. the books will live on but the point is that all the surrounding stuff won't. Why same something like that when it has no bearing on anything. the books are over. anything she wanted to say she shoulda put in them
BEGONE BAD MOOD BEGONE. maybe i should go back to bad. geez lighten up nathaniel
//"When you're casting a show that requires an actress to not only play one complex character, but in this case several, the road begins and ends with Toni Collette," Showtime Networks president of entertainment Robert Greenblatt said. "All of us at Showtime and DreamWorks are thrilled to have one of the best young actresses of her generation come aboard this project."//
Well isn't that the truth? I hate to say this Nat, but it looks as though for actresses who actually want to work, television (cable, that is) is more and more becoming the place to be. (I hate to say it in part because I don't have cable myself, so I will have to merely hear about Colette's fabulousness from others *sniff*.)
RedSatinDoll
Glad to hear about the Dumbledore outting. Now when I see him whispering to Maggie Smith, I'll now they're just dishing another character...lol It will be interesting to see if the upcoming movies have the balls to run with this new info. It could be fun.
This news would have overshadowed talk of the books, as silly as it all is. That's the world we live in. If the revelation was that important to her, then it would have been a part of novels. But barring the possibly negative attention that a gay character would have had in her work that's followed heavily by children, Rowling took the easy way out.
RedSatinDoll: In this age of near-instant DVD on TV, you can quickly catch up on anything you miss by not paying for premium cable. If anything, it's an incentive NOT to have premium cable.
Sure, you'll be behind the fan conversation by a few months, but final episodes of The Sopranos are now out, and people are still talking about that.
Regarding Dumbledore: I'm a little disappointed, but not for the usual reasons.
On the issue of Hogwarts faculty, JKR has created the strong impression that they lead celibate lives. (There's no Mr. McGonagall or Mrs. Flitwick, for example.)
But her outing of Dumbledore (and even more damning, her speculation on a married Prof. Neville Longbottom) tells me that she was just careless in leaving out the romantic lives of the teachers. Well, aside from Hagrid's flirtation with the Euro-Allison Janney.
Well it is irrelevant to the story. At this point, I think Rowling's just having fun.
The real question about Dumbledore being gay is, did he hire Lockhart because of his passing physical resemblance to Grindelwald? Not that anything happened, but Albus just liked looking at him, maybe?
I don't understand why people act as if making Dumbledore's sexuality clear in the book would have meant another 20 pages. Just another 5-10 lines at crucial spots would have done the job. The ones who claim this "ruins" all the time that Dumbledore spent with Harry amuse me. Do they not realize that Rowling already included that line of thinking in Deathly Hallows, as voiced by the detestable Rita Skeeter in that trashy unauthorized biography? What did they think she meant in accusing Dumbledore of having an unhealthy/sinister/unnatural interest in Harry, and that Harry possibly pushed Dumbledore to his death? These are probably the ones in denial about Aberforth and the goats, too.
"What pissed me off more what the whole throwing Lupin into the closet. But I'm getting too geeky for my own good here."
It did seem that way at first (especially combined with the girlie posters on Sirius' bedroom wall-subtle, Rowling), but you would think that if JKR really wanted to de-gay Lupin, she would have portrayed him as a blissful newlywed and family man instead of a man trapped in a what reads like a miserable shotgun marriage (though it's not, I was Potter geek enough to count). Even after they reconcile, he only really talks about the baby. He's the happiest in his last appearance, when his wife is no where to be found. So, on one hand, Rowling did marry off Lupin to a woman, but on the other, he was generally unenthusiastic about her. I really think the primary purpose of the marriage was to provide Harry with a godson who didn't have too many other living relatives.
It's sheer ignorance from those who are treating this as a publicity move on Rowling's part or simply criticizing it for the sake of criticism. I have encountered zero opinions of the negative variety from people on this matter which possess any substance whatsoever as all anyone can do is just claim Rowling wants a stab at headlines once more. That is just cynicism at its finest and most worthless. Most people who actually READ the books and CARE about the books, or at least have the intelligence to treat the series with respect, have recognized the potential for this revelation; Dumbledore has always been considered either asexual or potentially homosexual. It just seemed likely, and was very obvious to me in Deathly Hallows.
And let me ask you this: When would it have been a good time for her to come out and say "Dumbledore is gay?" Did you want her to open up at a press conference or make a big show of it earlier? The media is blowing this way out of proportion. Nobody had ever put the question to her before, and prior to Deathly Hallows, she wasn't much at liberty to discuss it. If someone had asked, "Did Dumbledore ever love anyone?" then she could not have explained. Much of Deathly Hallows surprise trajectory hinged on not knowing there was another side to Dumbledore, and that that side included Grindelwald.
The fact that she is opening up now on questions and characters and events is not because it's a last-ditch effort for attention (Rowling is the last author in need of attention!!), it's simply because she is at liberty to take questions now from readers and answer them truthfully. There are millions of questions fans want answered and her book tour was partly a means of addressing them. I think it's ridiculous that she is being ridiculed by people who maybe picked up the series once out of curiosity, maybe only finished the series and thought it okay, and now think they have the authority to spread a bogus opinion around.
Try rereading the series now with an attentive eye and maybe you'll see some deeper meanings behind certain actions and attitude associated with Dumbledore. Particularly in Order of the Phoenix.
And one more thing: some of these comments just prove that half of the people throwing their opinion around on this matter do not carry much weight when one goes around referring to the Beasleys rather than the Weasleys. Or constantly confusing Dumbledore with Gandalf.
Oh yeah, another thing: Two words: Elphias Doge. All the proof you need from DH to guess about Dumbledore's sexuality. Most consider Doge to be a pseudo-partner later in life considering the tone of the obituary was that of a grieving widow rather than just a friend.
the Gandalf thing was a joke. It's the stock mentor wizard character that all fantasies have....
the Beasleys rather than the Weasleys. Hee. my bad. I've only read 3 of the books and i haven't committed any of them to memory. I'm not a die hard fan, no. I was getting into them more recently with HALF BLOOD PRINCE but i gotta tell you: the fervor with which some people take this series, without a glimmer of self-awareness or an ability to laugh about it is disheartening. It's a turn off for those of us who are curious about it but not particularly engaged by the source material or the adaptations. (as I'm sure many obsessions about anything are --I'm sure i've turned people off about a couple of my obsessions)
but the thing is: if we can't joke about something or accept or discuss criticisms about it I honestly don't think that that's true engagement with the material. That's just blind devotion. There are too many Potter disciples and not enough fans... if that makes any sense.
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